Monday, May 29, 2017

A classic situation for a slingshot

Melvin Douglas and Glenn Ford

"This
is a classic situation for a catapult."

By Tom Walker

witsendmagazine

I

n 2011, my sister, Mary Walker Baron, wrote an article for
her blog, witsendmagazine.com, about that quote above. In case you may have somehow
forgotten, it’s a line delivered by Melvyn Douglas, as Col. Claude Brackenbury,
in the movie, “Advance To The Rear.”

At various inappropriate times, the somewhat addled colonel announces, “This
is a classic situation for a catapult.”

Well, Mary gave you an excuse for not remembering it: “The
movie was forgettable,” she wrote, “something about the Civil War.”

And, obviously, at a time when bullets and cannon balls were
doing an excellent job of sending Union and Confederate soldiers into their
graves, the Civil War wouldn’t seem to be a classic situation for a catapult.
Sorry, Colonel Brackenbury.

G

rowing up poor on an Arizona
desert ranch, Mary and I never had much of anything in the way of Tonka trucks
or baby dolls to play with. But when we were kids, our dad made both of us some
toys that proved to be a classic situation for our situation.

In fact, it was an early form of
catapult: a shepherd’s sling, similar to the one David used to slay Goliath.
Absolutely simple in design, our slings consisted of a leather pouch in the
middle of two lengths of leather cord. There was a loop at the end of one of
the cords that you placed over your thumb, and the other cord was held between
the thumb and forefinger.

A small, round stone was placed in the pouch. You then swung the sling in an arc, and at the
precise moment, you let go of the sling end of the cord. My faithful friend, Wikipedia, gives this explanation of what happened
then: “The
sling essentially works by extending the length of a human arm, thus allowing
stones to be thrown much farther than they could be by hand.”

Oh yes, it did. As a
dedicated slinger, I could hit the wood-plank walls of our corral with deadly, air-wailing
stones from a hundred yards away. Finally, my dad asked me to do my slinging in
another direction. I was wearing out our corral fences with my rocks.

A

A shepherd's sling

rchaeologists recently unearthed evidence
that the Romans used slingshots 1,900 years ago in their long war against the rebel
tribes of Scotland. The Roman slings could send a small lead bullet up to 130
yards at a speed of 100 miles per hour. They had the stopping power of a .44
magnum, the gun that Clint Eastwood made famous in his Dirty Harry movies.

And like Dirty
Harry’s .44 magnum, the Roman sling could blow your head clean off. Or maybe
scare you to death. The researchers found holes drilled in the lead Roman
bullets to make them wail loudly and terrifyingly as they flew through the air.

The war against the Scottish barbarians dragged on for
nearly two decades. Eventually, the Romans retreated to a fortified barrier
they had built known as Hadrian’s Wall.

Remnants of the Roman wall still stand, a tourist attraction
and a monument to the futility of walls as a means of keeping unwanted invaders
out. China’s Great Wall didn’t stop the Mongol hoards.

And funny, now we have a president who wants to build a
2,000-mile wall along the Mexican border. It’ll be GREAT! And BEAUTIFUL! And
it’ll make some lucky wall builders RICH! Rich, courtesy of the American
taxpayers.

But how many people will it keep from entering the United
States? NADA!

Y

es, but what, you
might ask, does all this have to do with slingshots and catapults? Well, quite
a lot, according to a May 24 opinion
piece in the Los Angeles Times by Max Brooks and Lionel Beehner, 'The Military's Shiny Object Obsession," Max Brooks is the author of “World War Z”
and a nonresident fellow at West Point's Modern War Institute. Lionel Beehner
is an assistant professor and director of research at the institute.

“President Eisenhower … foresaw a new age of collusion
between politicians, defense contractors and those who wear the stars,” Brooks
and Beehner write. “It was bad enough during the Cold War, but the dysfunction
is even worse now. Consider that of the 63 largest Pentagon programs at the
moment, 50 are over budget by $296 billion.”

It isn’t just money that gets wasted, the writers say; it’s
lives. In Iraq and Afghanistan, while Americans were being killed and maimed by
improvised explosive devises, the Pentagon was spending billions on air
superiority fighter jets and anti-ballistic missile lasers.

Meanwhile, our soldiers were wearing uniforms so cheap they
tore like tissue paper, and they rode in vehicles so lacking in armor that they
tore like tissue paper when the IEDs went off.

An interesting fact from the LA Times article: “The term ‘shoddy’
comes from the flimsy, mass-produced shoes that ‘shod’ our troops during the
Civil War.”

But what about catapults? you ask. What about slingshots?

Well, I think my point is that President Trump is trying to
build something along the lines of a catapult with his proposed budget that
asks for a $54 billion increase in defense spending. That seems to be the point Brooks
and Beehner are making, too. As a candidate, Trump promisedto slash the cost of military programs, but
he now promises “to lavish the military with whatever it needs.”

So defense contractors will get RICH! RICH! RICH! building
aircraft carriers, missile defense systems and other ultra-expensive catapults
while more Americans lose their lives and limbs in future (or maybe ongoing)
wars.

What we need are good slingshots, otherwise known as investigative reporters
and writers like Brooks and Beehner. Trump calls them the enemy, but I call
them heroes.

1 comment:

WELCOME

We, our communities, our nations, and our world are at our wits' end. This blog and witsendmagazine.com can help us pull back from the edge to a safer place of harmony and sustainability.You are an essential part of this task.Join us.

The paths we choose

are best when traveled together.

We Can Do It

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."-- Margaret Mead